LECTURE: Sustainable Systems as Organisms

You are invited to a free public lecture by

Mae-Wan Ho, Director and co-founder of the Institute of Science in Society, London, UK; Editor of Science in Society

Sustainable Systems as Organisms

Date and Time: Thursday 7 October at 6.30pm

Social Sciences Lecture Theatre, UWA (Parking available from Hackett Drive entrance 1 in Car Park 3. Map at http://maps.uwa.edu.au/crawley/display/11)



Abstract: For decades, academic ecologists obsessed with competitive relationships have wondered why nature is so diverse, and even regarded biodiversity as a nuisance in agriculture. One-dimensional measures of crop yield and productivity have misled policy-makers into promoting the unsustainable high input and destructive monocultures of the green revolution.

A new understanding of the organism and of sustainable systems as organisms explains why biodiverse systems are much more productive than monocultures. It reaffirms the indigenous wisdom that underlies all forms of sustainable agricultural systems across the world.

Biographical Note Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is Director and co-founder of the Institute of Science in Society, London, UK; Editor of Science in Society (“the only radical science magazine in the world”); honorary research fellow, King’s College London University; and scientific advisor to the Third World Network. Best known for pioneering work on the physics of organisms and major critic of genetic engineering (“scourge of Monsanto”). Author/co-author of more than three hundred publications across many disciplines, including 11 books, among which: Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare (1998, 1999), The Rainbow and the Worm, the Physics of Organisms (1993, 1998, reprinted 1999, 2001, 2003); Living with the Fluid Genome (2003); The Case for a GM-Free Sustainable World (2003, 2004).

Relevant publications The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, World Scientific, Singapore, 1993, 2nd ed. 1998, reprinted 2000, 2001, 2003. Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare? 1998, 2nd ed. 1999, Third World Network, Gateway, Gill & Macmillan, Continuum, Penang, Reading, Dublin, New York, re-issued in compact disc, 2004 (www.i-sis.org.uk) Living with the Fluid Genome, ISIS and TWN, 2003 (www.i-sis.org.uk) Science in Society quarterly magazine (www.i-sis.org.uk)

ALL WELCOME. NO RESERVATION IS REQUIRED

For more information please contact The Institute of Advanced Studies, UWA on Tel (08) 6488 1340; Email [email protected]; www.ias.uwa.edu.au